1. Industrial Field of Utilization
The present invention relates to a content sale and purchase system for electronic music apparatuses designed to prevent unauthorized use of the digital contents on sale via a communication network such as the Internet.
The present invention also relates to a content usage system which is capable of using, in a restrictive manner, digital contents on sale through computer networks while preventing the digital contents from being used in an unauthorized manner.
2. Prior Art
Digital contents such as sample music waveform data for example usable on electronic musical apparatuses such as samplers may be purchased in a CD-ROM at a real store or in a manner by which content is downloaded from a content sale site on a communication network such as the Internet. The content thus purchased is usable not only on electronic musical apparatuowned by a particular user but also on electronic musical apparatus owned by other users. If one user has a plurality of electronic musical apparatuses, the user may utilize any of these machines for use of the content.
However, this availability of the purchased content on many electronic musical apparatuses makes it easy to make the unauthorized duplication thereof, which is obviously undesirable with respect to copyright protection. This is a first problem.
For copyright protection, the inventor proposes in this application a method in which usage license agreement information is attached to each piece of purchased content to allow only the licensed electronic musical apparatuses for the use of the content. However, if a licensed electronic musical apparatus is not enough in content processing capability, the above-mentioned method may present a second problem that the content concerned cannot be fully used.
For example, a content usage system with two or more samplers connected to a network as electronic musical apparatuses may become disabled if one of the samplers has a limited performance in the number of soundings, the number of multi-parts, or the memory size for example relative to the content concerned. If this happens, the processing must carried out by a second sampler. If this second sampler is not licensed, however, this content cannot be fully used by this system.